Attempt TWO with photoshop

So with the picture of the rose the pink is too bright and saturated next to the blacks and grays of the picture. This time I made an attempt at a different picture and I think the result looks a lot more natural.

I really like just leaving the golf cart and the fire hydrant in color because those are the reasons I took the picture.

Useing a Different Camera

So I have a 35 mm SLR Nikon N 75. And when my class went to South Paris Maine to the McLaughlin Garden I borrowed by friends digital canon rebel (she owns both a digital and 35 mm). It was different from my camera in so many ways. The first is in how many pictures I took. With the digital I took about 50 in 45 min., with my 35 mm I usually go through a roll (24-36) in that time.

But the biggest difference was adjusting to the lens. I learned quickly that when I want to be close on an object with the lens the picture will turn out like:

But as I got the hang of it I was able to take beautiful close-ups of flowers, one of my favorite things to take close-ups of and I began to wish I had a digital camera…maybe I will get one in the future.

One of the flowers from the garden.

Photoshop is my NEW best friend!

So I put photoshop on my computer yesterday and had some fun. And with using it I turned this photograph:

Into this one:

It’s not perfect, put as a start with photoshop I like.

Rocks on Water

So before I take a quick nap after my exhausting hike (not really exhausting….I just feel like taking a nap.) I will display a picture from my trip to Wolfneck State Park, right outside Freeport Maine.

Taken at a beach, there were a ton of little streams leading to the water due to the melting snow. I love this pictures because it adds warm colors to an otherwise white looking rock.

Depth of Field

So one of my friends in my Nature Photography class does not understand what exactly the aperture does to a picture (neither did I until my photo class this fall.) The aperture (f-stop) controls the size of the opening of the lens. And it effects the depth of the field that appears in the picture.

Small F-stop (ex. 5.6) is a large opening to let in more light. Because the opening is very big the camera can only focus on a small area. This often creates a blurry background. For example in the following picture.

The short depth of field also makes a end to the picture and the eye can’t travel to a point beyond the picture. This leads to long depth of field. So using a small opening, large f-stop, you can achieve a long depth of field. Often everything in the picture is focused and the eye wants to travel to through the picture clearly and often to a point not visible.

 

So there we have it, short depth of field, part of the picture is blurry, long depth of field, entire picture is focused.

Nature Photography #2: Hand-Rolled Film

If there has been anything I have learned this week in the class is that I don’t like hand-rolled film and my camera HATES is. I have one of those SLR automatic/ manual ones (the lighting can be determined automatically or manually). A Nikon N75 to be precise that uses film (hopefully in the new future I will have an SLR digital one). I love it to death and it terrified me when 3 days in a row and error popped up on my screen and I didn’t know how to fix it. I actually still don’t know exactly how to fix it, just HOURS upon HOURS of messing around with it and it fixes itself. I know though what causes is….hand rolled film. What happens is that my camera has such a large computer brain compared to older versions of a 35 mm SLR that it thinks to much and doesn’t know what to think of this film.

Sadly, I think this means no black and white film in this class….so very little time in the dark room. I might go out and buy some factory rolled so I can be able to print. But I now know more about my camera then I probably would ever learn from a manual (I don’t really use my manually anyway). My camera HATES hand-rolled film and now I hate it too!